I’ve spent the last 20 years in the apparel and merch world. But the story starts earlier than that.
I grew up around music, promotion, artist management, and the chaos that comes with it. I loved the energy, but over time it became obvious the industry didn’t fit my values. What stuck with me, though, was something simple: every artist we worked with struggled to find merch partners who cared about quality, honesty, or service.
So when I stepped out of the music world, I knew exactly where I could make a real difference.
In 2008, my business partner Scott and I built the merch company we wished we’d had back then. That became Threadbird, a relationship-first, quality-driven apparel and merchandise agency offering screen printing, embroidery, cut & sew, and fulfillment. Today, it’s one of the leading companies in the industry, trusted by thousands of brands that want more than basic print shops or transaction-only vendors. It’s also a four-time Inc. 5000 honoree among America’s fastest-growing private companies (2016 to 2019).
I’ve spent my career focused on the parts of this business most people ignore: the craftsmanship, the operations, the customer experience, and the long-term relationships that outlast any single merch drop. I’m an operator at heart, not a “social media expert,” and everything I teach or publish comes from running a real company with real stakes.
After helping thousands of clothing brands, I realized I’d never actually built one for myself.
That changed when my wife Rebecca and I started Palmr, our own clothing brand. She leads the creative direction; I run the operations and production side. What surprised me was how much it sharpened my perspective. Sitting on the other side, building a brand from scratch instead of supporting one, pushed me to learn new things, rethink old assumptions, and understand the challenges our clients face in a deeper way. It made my work, and the advice I give, better.
The newest chapter is software.
Running Palmr showed me how much of a small brand’s week gets eaten by tools that don’t talk to each other. Design files in one place, production specs in another, content, ambassadors, and inventory scattered everywhere. Big apparel companies solve this with in-house systems and an ops team. Small brands get spreadsheets.
So I’m building Obi-Hub, the operating system for small clothing brands. Design, production, content, ambassadors, and your Shopify store in one connected workspace, sized for teams of one to ten. It’s in private beta now, running a real brand in production every day: ours.
Companies & projects over the years
Twenty years in, the resume is less a straight line and more a stack of logos: companies founded, owned, or vested in across apparel, music, retail, and software. Every one of them taught me something I still use.
Now
- Obi‑Hub
Past
4× Inc. 5000 honoree · America’s fastest-growing private companies (2016 to 2019)
Outside of work, I’m a husband and a father before anything else. My family is the center of my life, and my faith is the reason I’ve had the strength to stay in this industry for two decades. Everything I’ve built, from Threadbird to Palmr to Obi-Hub to the writing I do here, comes from those foundations.
This site is where I write down what I’ve learned.
The mistakes, the behind-the-scenes lessons, the operational insights, the things most people in merch never talk about. No hype. No shortcuts. Just the real experience of someone who’s been doing this long enough to see what actually works.
I’m not selling a course. I’m writing down what works.
Start with the Knowledge Bank, or get in touch. I read everything.